Indian Geography Questions and Answers

Answer: C

Correct answer: Assam

Assam is by a wide margin India’s largest tea-producing state, accounting for roughly half the national crop, and the Brahmaputra valley is the largest contiguous tea-growing region in the world. The conditions suit the plant exactly: heavy rainfall, high humidity, warm temperatures and well-drained alluvial soil on gently sloping land, since tea will not tolerate standing water at its roots. West Bengal is second, with the Darjeeling and Dooars districts, and Darjeeling tea - grown at altitude and giving a distinctive light liquor - holds a geographical indication. Tamil Nadu and Kerala follow, with the Nilgiris and Munnar. India is the world’s second largest producer after China and among the largest consumers, so a smaller share of its crop is exported than the figures might suggest. Commercial cultivation began in Assam in the 1830s, when the indigenous Camellia sinensis assamica was found growing wild there.

Answer: C

Correct answer: The Ganga and the Brahmaputra

The Sundarbans occupies the delta of the Ganga and the Brahmaputra, shared between West Bengal and Bangladesh. It is the largest mangrove forest in the world and a UNESCO World Heritage site. Its name is usually taken from the sundari tree that dominates it. The forest is a maze of tidal creeks and low islands, flooded twice daily, and the mangroves survive the salt by excluding it at the roots and excreting it through the leaves, standing on stilt roots with vertical pneumatophores that take in oxygen the waterlogged mud cannot supply. It is the only mangrove forest inhabited by tigers, and its Bengal tigers are unusual in swimming between islands. It also shelters saltwater crocodiles, the Ganges river dolphin and a great variety of birds. Its practical value is as a storm barrier: the tangled roots absorb cyclone surge and check coastal erosion, protecting Kolkata and the settlements behind it.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Gujarat

Gujarat is the largest producer of cotton in India, with Maharashtra and Telangana following. India is the world’s largest producer of the crop by area and among the largest by output. Cotton needs high temperature, light rainfall or irrigation, 210 frost-free days and bright sunshine during ripening. The black cotton soil of the Deccan, weathered from basalt and able to hold moisture through the dry season, suits it particularly well, which is why the crop is named for that soil. Gujarat leads partly on irrigation from the Narmada canal system and partly on the rapid adoption of Bt cotton after its approval in 2002, which now accounts for almost the entire crop and transformed yields. India grows all four cultivated species, and long-staple varieties command the higher price. The industry has a long history: cotton textiles from Gujarat and Bengal were among India’s principal exports for centuries before mechanised competition displaced them in the nineteenth century.

Answer: C

Rice occupies the largest share of the cropped area.

It is grown on about 44 million hectares, chiefly in the eastern and southern states where rainfall exceeds 100 cm, followed by wheat at about 30 million hectares in the north-west. India is the second largest producer of both.

Answer: B

Correct answer: The Tennessee Valley Authority

The Damodar Valley Corporation, established in 1948, was modelled on the American Tennessee Valley Authority and was India’s first multipurpose river valley project. The Damodar was called the sorrow of Bengal for its devastating floods, and the corporation was created to control them while also generating power, providing irrigation and supporting navigation and afforestation - the integrated basin-wide approach the TVA had pioneered in the 1930s. It operates a series of dams across Jharkhand and West Bengal, including Tilaiya, Konar, Maithon and Panchet, together with thermal stations, and it supplies the industrial belt around Durgapur, Bokaro and Asansol - a region built on the coal of the Damodar valley fields. Its record is mixed. Flood control has been only partly achieved, since fewer dams were built than planned and siltation has reduced storage. It nonetheless set the pattern for Bhakra Nangal, Hirakud and the other projects of the period.

Answer: A

Correct answer: linking Maharashtra, Goa and Karnataka along a difficult coastal terrain

The Konkan Railway runs about 740 km from Roha in Maharashtra to Thokur in Karnataka, through Goa, along a coastal strip broken by the spurs of the Western Ghats and by dozens of rivers. Its construction between 1990 and 1998 is regarded as one of independent India’s major engineering achievements: more than 90 tunnels and around 2,000 bridges, cut through soft laterite that made tunnelling unusually dangerous. It included what was then India’s longest railway tunnel and, at Panval Nadi, one of Asia’s tallest viaducts. Before it, travel between Mumbai and Mangaluru meant a long detour inland over the Ghats, and the line cut the distance by hundreds of kilometres. It was built and is operated by a separate corporation, funded partly by public bonds, rather than by Indian Railways directly - a financing model then new in India. Monsoon landslides remain its recurring difficulty, and services are run to a modified timetable through the rains.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Rice

Rice is the principal kharif crop. Kharif crops are sown with the onset of the southwest monsoon in June and harvested in September and October, and they depend on the monsoon rain. The other kharif crops are maize, jowar, bajra, ragi, cotton, groundnut, soyabean, sugarcane and jute. Wheat, mustard and gram are all rabi crops, sown in October and November as the monsoon withdraws and harvested in March and April. They grow through the cool dry season on residual soil moisture, winter rain from western disturbances, and irrigation. Barley and peas belong to the same group. A third short season, zaid, runs between the two in the summer months and produces watermelon, cucumber and fodder entirely under irrigation. The names come from Arabic: kharif means autumn and rabi spring, each referring to the season of harvest rather than of sowing.

Answer: B

Bihar and Orissa hold the largest iron ore deposits.

The Singhbhum-Keonjhar-Mayurbhanj belt, which straddles the two, holds high-grade haematite and feeds the steel plants of Jamshedpur, Bokaro and Rourkela. Since 2000 the Bihar portion lies in Jharkhand.

Answer: C

Delhi has the highest density among the Union Territories.

It records about 11,300 persons per sq km, against 9,250 for Chandigarh and 2,100 for Lakshadweep. Delhi's density is a consequence of its being effectively a single urban agglomeration.

Answer: A

Kalpakkam was built entirely with Indian design and engineering.

The Madras Atomic Power Station in Tamil Nadu was the first wholly indigenous nuclear station, and its site also houses the country's Fast Breeder Test Reactor. Tarapur was built with American help and Rawatbhata with Canadian.